The Best Lines From the Don Rickles Tribute at the Friar’s Club

Photos:The Best Lines From the Don Rickles Tribute at the Friar’s Club

1/10

John Stamos, Don Rickles and Kathy Griffin.

By David Alan Kogut/Friars Club.

+−zoom

The Friars Club honored Don Rickles with a lifetime-achievement award for comedy on Monday night. Unlike their infamous Roasts, the Friars’ annual Applause-award gala is a tribute, where the honoree is praised instead of being picked on.

“I think the tribute will last about 30 seconds,” Bob Newhart told VF Daily during pre-show cocktails at the Waldorf. “And then it’s ‘Katie, bar the door.’ I mean, if you’ve got Bob Saget, and you’ve got Joan Rivers, it’s not going to be a tribute.”

We spotted Rivers later in the crowd, and she verified this. “It may be a tribute, but I’m doing jokes,” she declared. “The difference, by the way, between a roast and a toast is: a roast, you have a Comedy Central show coming out of it, and a toast, they turned us down.”

Diana Krall, Natalie Cole, and John Mayer performed. (Organizers didn’t realize until partway through the proceedings that Mayer’s date was Katy Perry, and they announced her presence from the stage.)

At the very end, the stars got up onstage to serenade Rickles—even De Niro sang—and Bette Midler and Billy Crystal made a surprise appearance and joined in the song.

Sure, there were heartfelt tributes, but here we bring you some of the best jokes of the evening:

Bob Newhart:

“I’m mainly here to praise Don, because this is a tribute. I think we should get the bestiality suit out of the way right now. It wasn’t a goat. It was a sheep.

Don and I, we were talking about Michael Douglas and the cunnilingus. Remember that? I said to him, ‘It’s terrible about Michael Douglas and cunnilingus.’ And he said, ‘I thought it was an Irish airline.’

We vacation a lot, and what Ginny, my wife, and I do is we vacation with Don, and then after that, we take a vacation. So we can enjoy ourselves.”

Joan Rivers:

“There are so many people here. There’s Regis. There’s Tony Bennett. And Bob [De Niro]. And me. And Don. It looks like a walking bucket list.

Bob Newhart I love to watch sitting among Jews, because he looks like Sarah Palin in a library.

Natalie [Cole] is the only black woman in show business who Robert De Niro, before he married his wife, didn’t do. He’s happily married now, but before that, he had more black asses on his face than the backseat of Rosa Park’s bus.

Don, Kathy, and I follow in your footsteps, as so many of us have, because you were the first insult comic, the first irreverent comic. You created an entire genre; I hope you know that. You are kind of like Captain Kirk—does that make sense? I think of you as Ellen DeGeneres’s vagina: you’ve gone where no man has gone before.”

Robert De Niro:

“When I heard that Bob Newhart, Joan Rivers, Lewis Black, Freddie Roman, John Mayer, Bob Saget, and everyone else were going to be here, I thought, Amazing. That’s a really impressive lineup for the Don Rickles memorial service. Don would have been so proud.

I’m only irritated that last week when I was in Israel celebrating Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday, I wasted my prayer at the Wailing Wall on Don’s memory.

When I got here tonight and saw all the comedians, I tried to get out of speaking, because obviously, I’m not a comedian; I’m a serious actor. At least I was until 1995, until Casino was released.”

Don Rickles:

“Scorsese was our director. He had phone books under his ass so he could see the actors.

Regis Philbin is here, my dear friend. He goes down to Notre Dame, crosses himself, then they put a football in his ass and kick him.

There are so many stars here tonight. As I look down the list—there’s nobody big!

Diana Krall I met in, I think it was Canada. She’s a lovely lady. Her husband, Elvis Costello, is a great star.”